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I got 5 of them 3 years ago. I don't treat/coddle them for anything. 3 of the queens are still going strong in one of my out yards. They have done well all the way around. All of them were a bit on the warm side of the scale though.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

which of their lines of bees are you interested in? i have no direct experiance with hgb but have noticed that they are offering the new usda russians. i have made a decision to go the way of a small cluster/frugal bee so a breeder so close is good.
hopefully more info on taber bees and the usda russian program will be forth coming.

No I did not Sierra. Although I don't mind working bees with an attitude, I don't want to propagate them. I moved the bees to one of my out yards about 90 miles away.

i'm in no way questioning your experiance with your bees but reading your above post reminded me of an experiance of my own.
through harvesting swarms and natural requeening i have come up with some bees that are darker, more agitated on inspections and prone to hit my vail. this was behavior differant than the light bees i was used to. at first i admit to being a bit intimadated but in time realized that these bees were not stinging me and got used to their behavior. i was able to change my attitude towards these particular bees and as of this writing we're getting along fine.

I've ordered ten of their Russian/Carnolian queens. They say they are gentle, and the Carnolians have that reputation. On their web page they describe a strain of Carnolians from an isolated area where no drugs have been available to treat bees and the varroa mite has been around for 100 years. I believe the Russian half of the mix is from bees bred by Steve Taber for tracheal mite resistance. I intend to use them to re-queen one of may yards where I have some hot hives. I've had to keep the hot queens because of my huge losses last year and I made two splits from the bad queen and ended up with four nasty hives, but I couldn't get queens last year. Three out of the four have survived and they are so strong I expect to be able to make three nucs from each during the blackberry bloom, but I want to squish the old hot queens and get some friendlier stock. It's too bad, these were survivors and top performers at a time when I lost 80 percent of my more mellow bees. After last year I am putting survior traits first, production second, and personality last.

Trust me stang, a couple of these you can approach with any kind of attitude you care to. But you had better have a suit on. And a full smoker.

Sierra, don't let that stop you from buying some bees from them. I wouldn't myself. Everybody pushing bees out for a living is going to have some go out that don't do what they claim. There can be a lot of factors involved that cause a bad batch.

The only reason I haven't gotten more from them is that my interests have changed some, and what they have isn't part of it.

They are great honey producers and the fact that they are still alive and well after all this time says pages for their ability to survive. As it is they are doing a great job supporting my other interests. If they weren't they would be in my dead queen collection.

My buddy up the road here loves hot bees. He goes through about 3 suits a year cuz they rip em to shreds on him!!

Really though, don't worry about it. I'm sure they will do fine for you!!

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

I'm not real fond of hot bees. The ones I am going to re-queen already cost me one good location. Unfortunately if I want to get built back up after last years results, I'll put up with some aggressiveness if they will survive without chemicals. If they are too hot, I'll just have to make lure attractant out of them (probably still cheaper ounce for ounce than the comercially available swarm lures), and rely on feral swarms to provide a strong genetic base. It amazes me how gentle the feral bees I collect in this area are.